Best Of Web And Design In November 2010

The end of year is rapidly approaching and as normal we have decide to wrap up what’s happening within the online design community in November and collected all the best links all into one post. Enjoy this monthly wrap up as usual a great ton of design tutorials and some must check awesome freebies.

Follow this step by step design tutorial to create a simple vector mechanic character in Illustrator. We’ll build the basic shape of the character using simple shapes, then slowly build up the details with a range of linework. To finish off the character we’ll fill the design with colour then add a few touches of shading and highlighting.

It seems that as a community, designers tend to be very entrepreneurial. Members of the industry are constantly starting new ventures that are either extensions of their businesses or of personal brands. Some create and sell their own apps and premium WordPress themes, while others start new blogs.

While Illustrator is not a true 3D application, you can still achieve sophisticated results with a few simple shapes. Both parts of this video tutorial are included in this post. In Part 1 of this tutorial, you’ll learn all about Illustrator’s 3D effects, plus a few handy tips and tricks. In Part 2, we’ll create shiny icons and a glossy screen, then put it all together using Symbols and 3D mapping. Two new time-saving tools in Illustrator CS5 will also be demonstrated.

Photoshop

shows you how to realize from scratch a ghostly scene in few steps. We will use a couple of stock photos and modify them so they will look harmoniously combined. In particular we will deal with the burn tool, layer masks and some Photoshop filters often overlooked.

In this tutorial It will explain how to create funny letters that look like broken plates. We will start in Illustrator modifying the original font, then we will switch to Photoshop in order to play with textures and layer styles. Also we will deal with selection tools and simple methods to create 3d illusion always in Photoshop.

This was an artwork for a cover album named: “The Revolution”. The idea behind this artwork was to combine the colors of Trance music and the evolution. I did some researchs on Trance albums and they seems to use a lot the blue color so I picked blue. I could have chosen some red for expressing the evolution but why not orange! I wanted to make it different! I won’t be telling you all the steps in detail but I’ll be giving you hints that will help you make your “own”design.

Freebies

Download this pack of military camouflage patterns to create infinitely repeating camo backgrounds for your designs. Each camouflage pattern is available in vector format so it can be used at any size imaginable, as well as a JPEG format for everyday use in Photoshop.

For this week, I’ve got some retro wallpaper textures with a twist. I took pictures of some vintage wallpaper designs, inverted them and rendered difference clouds, then applied a small amount of lighting. These would probably work nicely as a low opacity overlay to add a little more texture to a background that already exists but needs a little more spice. Hope you put them to good use.

It is always helpful to have a nice collection of icons standing by for whenever you might need them. Today, we’ve got an exciting set of exclusive icons to give away to our readers for free. This set contains 10 icons in AI and PNG formats that you can drop into your designs. This icon set contains some of the most popular phones available including the iPhone 4, Blackberry Bold, Motorola Droid, HTC Evo 4G, Samsung Captivate, Acer Stream, LG Fathom, Nokia N8, Sony Ericsson Vivaz, and the Microsoft Kin.

Today’s freebie is a seamless pattern which comes with a Photoshop pattern file alongside a high quality PNG file of the patterns. The pattern set in total includes 8 patterns just in a range of different colours. Hope you enjoy this pattern set your more than welcome to share your thoughts.

Web Design And Design Articles

Writing semantic, efficient and valid HTML and CSS can be a time-intensive process that only gets better with experience. While it is important to take the time to produce high-quality code — as it is what separates professionals from hobbyists — it is equally important to produce websites as expeditiously and efficiently as possible.

Website designers are often concerned about their tangible skills, like hardcore Photoshop skills or a mastery of jQuery. However, becoming successful in the field of web design requires more than just having the right equipment or a wonderful grip on design. There are some very important things that any aspiring web designer should keep in mind when you’re building your professional repertoire. We’ll also provide a useful “reading list” for where you can get more in-depth information.

The hype today is all about the new HTML5, the newest version of HTML that has combined classic HTML with XML, plus more features for modern web development. It is also, technically, the new version of XHTML 1.0, and in the near future it will be the main markup language we use for computer-based website creation (as opposed to mobile devices).

The hype today is all about the new HTML5, the newest version of HTML that has combined classic HTML with XML, plus more features for modern web development. It is also, technically, the new version of XHTML 1.0, and in the near future it will be the main markup language we use for computer-based website creation (as opposed to mobile devices).

It’s frustrating. As a proud small business owner, you put a lot of time into your site and perfecting its content. You’ve segmented your customers and have created targeted landing pages to attract them but, for some reason, they’re not converting. What are you to do? It’s time to tweak and troubleshoot your landing pages for ultimate success!

There you are, sitting at your desk, the first fizz of a newly opened can of soda still sparkling in your ears, and your new hire walks in the door. Your design firm is small, but beginning to grow and you’ve just brought a new web designer on board. He’s not particularly experienced, but he has a good educational background, a small but impressive portfolio, and was bright, personable and apparently knowledgeable enough during the job interview.